PRTG Manual: Setting up Notifications Based on Libraries: Example

What’s so special about notifications set to whole libraries instead of single sensors? How do I set up libraries, and how do I get the most out of my library notifications?

This section describes how you can reorganize your devices or sensors by their function, and thereby create a new customizable view. This way you can monitor entire sections of your network with a single set of notifications.

You can personalize these views and their notifications for your own use. Furthermore, you can grant and restrict permission to this view to other PRTG users or PRTG user groups, to give them direct access to some of the information in PRTG. By using libraries, you can make your notification management faster, easier, more powerful, and more refined.

Step 1: Setting up a New Library

Creating a New Library

Create a new library:

Hover over Libraries in the main menu bar and select Add Library.

Give the library a meaningful name and assign it a security context. Possibly add some Tags for easier organization.

Optionally, assign access rights to your predefined user groups.

Click Create to create the new library.

The Management tab of the library opens.

Library Overview Tab

Add objects to your library:

Click the Add Library Node button.

The Add Library dialog opens.

Define the Node Display Settings:

Choose a node from which the sensors will be taken (predefined: Root).

Select Show a collection of filtered sensors in the library (max. 1000) to filter (the subtree) further.

Show sensors with a specific sensor status only: Choose from up, warning, down, or unusual.

Show objects with specific tags only: Enter tags to include certain sensors.

Show objects with a specific priority only: Priority "1" through "5" is possible.

The libraries are dynamic not static. When you add or remove sensors to your device tree that are of a type already specified here, the library will automatically update the displayed sensors. The same is true for the other three categories.

Confirm via OK.

The new library node appears.

You can rearrange the nodes in any sequence you require. To manually add objects from the device tree, proceed as follows: Select the Management tab, click and hold an object from the right-hand device tree, then drag over to the Drop objects here area. This will transfer the entire content of the object to a new library node.

Manually Adding Objects to Libraries

Step 2: Specify Notification Triggers

You can use library notifications very much the same way as notifications for sensors or devices.

In your library, click the Notification Triggers tab.

Choose one of the various notification trigger types and configure it:

Add State Trigger to send notifications about sensor states over a specified time period.

Add Speed Trigger to send notifications when having too little or too much traffic over a specified time period.

Add Volume Trigger to send notifications when a predefined amount of data in the specified interval is accumulated.

You monitor hundreds of servers and want to keep an eye on CPU utilization. Using the channel limits within the sensors would cause an overwhelming amount of alerts, because CPUs can easily spike to 100% load for one scanning interval, without necessarily indicating a problem.

Using libraries, it only takes you a couple of minutes to create a notification setup that will notify you when a CPU runs at more than 90% load for more than 5 minutes.

escalation parameters (triggering state is always the same, ongoing duration that triggers escalation, the type of the escalation notification triggered, and how often it is repeated),

if the trigger parameters no longer apply, enter the type of notification to be triggered.

Example: Setting Notifications for Libraries

An overview of all currently defined triggers appears.

On top of that, you may want PRTG to keep sending you Tickets when a lower load threshold is periodically exceeded. This low priority notification will remind you to keep an eye on a certain part of your network. Proceed likewise via the Add Threshold Trigger button.

You are completely free to set multiple triggers of the same type, so you can define increasingly serious notifications, as well progressing through different notification actions (email, SMS text, etc.). For system-critical network components, we recommend that you always define two different notification triggers (for example, email and escalation SMS text message).

The next steps will be to review the notifications settings, summarization, and notification actions in the main menu under Setup | Account Settings | Notification Templates.

Step 3: Test, Troubleshooting, and Customization

To make sure the notification system works as desired, you can trigger test notifications out of PRTG.

This only applies to PRTG on premises instances, not to PRTG hosted by Paessler.

Review the logs for system events of the type "Notification" and the respective notification's name.

Repeat these steps for all your notifications.

Sensors can perform simulated errors. Go to the library's Overview tab, right-click a sensor, and select Simulate Error Status from the context menu. You will see that the sensor status quickly changes and sends the following message: Simulated error (code: PE034). This also triggers the notification.